


Life, Greed, and War

by Keeperkeepkipsi



Category: Abzû (Video Game)
Genre: Other, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-30 20:23:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19034998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keeperkeepkipsi/pseuds/Keeperkeepkipsi
Summary: A guess at the backstory of Abzu, based on the structure of the regions, the murals, and the fact that although the diver and the machines were made from the same factory, they are hostile to each other. To me, this suggests a civil war.





	Life, Greed, and War

When we began, it was simple. The cycle was clear: what we took, we returned, and what we returned, we took. Life begets life. But life also begets greed for more life.

Our ancestors loved that green haven. The kelp reached upwards toward the sun and the crabs skittered beneath rock arches where shadows sought refuge. Everything was green and blue and yellow; it was bright, warm, lively. Here, they built their statues and their bridges and their pools. The ocean gave them the means to live, and they paid it back in tribute.

So much life sprung forth at the end of the jet stream. On that endless plain of coral, sand, and shells, dolphins frolicked between sea and sky, the horizon their plaything. And in this jewel of pink, there were still darkened spaces, glimpses into depths where other creatures lived. The ocean fed them just as it fed us.

We learned as we went on. We learned first the workings of stone, then the workings of metal. Chains; doorways; homes; shrines. We harnessed the blue in new ways, fantastic ways that made life beautiful. For this, we honored the ocean. We filled her with signs of our gratitude, and her sharks watched over us like angels.

We fed on the life of the ocean, and we became gluttons.When that glowing blue was immersed in our metal, it changed our fate forever. Now, it was kept. It was stolen. 

And we rejoiced, for life was so much easier now. No longer did we have to make the journey to the sacred wells; the machines we had created in our image did it for us. They explored the reaches that our ancestors had seen themselves. Eventually we built pyramids that could tap into the power directly; self-sufficient machines. We thought we were blessed, favored by the divine. The ocean’s life was still sustaining us, with our own innovation magnifying its ability, and still we praised the ocean. We worshipped the sharks as they watched us succumb to the slothfulness offered by our machines.

Of course, the war started with the scientists. Perhaps it was not called a war until later, when the mines were placed and the wells quarantined. But my father saw the war when it began in the eyes of his peers. The priests implored them to return the blue to the ocean; the wells were suffering, the life was disappearing. It was only a matter of time before we would disappear too, they had said.

Even if the ocean itself goes dark, we will still be here, said the scientists, because we have the life of the ocean here in our grasp.

The ocean gives, and the ocean will take, said the priests.

But the ocean could not take itself back. The scientists refused to return it. Thus, the war began.

The priests rushed in from their shrines, demanding the factory be shut down. Their weapons were paltry playthings before the mechanical defenses. The scientists drove them out with ease, and the outer regions were put under siege. The mines put an uncrossable barrier between the factory and the ancient temples. As they drove the priests further back, the scientists closed off the regions with metal doors, nothing like the elaborate framework of old. 

The temple region became a prison. The priests had no choice but to flee, back to the open ocean from which our ancestors arrived. Most of the civilians fled the other way, hoping to find a place to begin our civilization anew. The wells continued to fade into gray shadows. The factory and its children glowed with molten cores.

My father built some of those children. The finest work of his life, replicas of our people, a symbol of our life in the sea and our innovation. The gems of our society, which now became unwitting soldiers. They could withstand blows our people could never bear. They could seek out the mines, their stolen energy cores resonating with their brother machines. Even so, they were not enough for my father’s resistance to topple the factory, with its scientists and nobles and destructive, parasitic pyramids.

I am my father’s daughter. I know a war when I see one, and I saw defeat and death on the horizon. Yet there is one thing that I lack from my father: his determined, stubborn heart. He wanted to go down fighting. He knew he would die, and he wanted to die standing against the heretics, against the greed that was destroying our homes. I wanted to live. I wanted to see us rise from the ashes. I would not fight a losing battle. I ran, to fight another day.

With one of his metal children, the closest thing I have ever had to a sister, I fled. I dragged her inert metal limbs through the cold minefield, I sacrificed all the drones I had brought with me to those hostile shocks, and I brought us through those gray waters where once our people paid tribute to our fountain of life. By the time we made it to our ancestors’ first settlement, their green promised land, the final battle was surely over. They would not come looking for me; only my father knew of my escape. And with energy only being stolen, and never returned, it was only a matter of time before the scientists faced the consequences of their greed.

I floated out into the shallow basin with my metal-boned sister. Her energy core had not yet been activated; she was the last of my father’s projects, the most advanced. But she needed the ocean’s energy to start. With the wells gone dark, I had only one option. We all are born from that energy, and we carry it inside us. The ocean is the source of all our lives. Once it was hers to give. Now it was mine. And one day, it would be ours to give back.

…

I wake up floating in water. I don’t remember anything. All I feel is that something bad happened. And I must fix it.


End file.
